Okay, so we've gone a little nuts over this Food Swap thing.
I should backtrack and explain a little. In early September I found out about something called a "food swap," which is basically an event during which a bunch of food nerds swap homemade or homegrown foods. I love barter, and thought this was a brilliant idea, but figured it was probably one of those things going on in New York or Seattle or somewhere like that, and was surprised to find out that one of the more successful ones is going on monthly, right here in Minneapolis. We seemed to be too late to get in for the September event that was happening three days after I found out about it, but at the last minute (Friday afternoon for a Saturday event!) some tickets opened up and we were able to go.
I think we did pretty well for having so little notice -- I raided my Leaning Tower of Jam in the pantry (that's a whole other post -- the Jam Tower consists entirely of flats of half-pint jars of jam I've made since June, and it is now, while sitting on the floor, actually taller than I am!) and David whipped up some of his tasty garlic-havarti rolls; we grabbed some jars of salsa and took off for the swap.
I was too busy during the event last month to get pictures, but the whole thing is very well-organized, and takes place in a lovely space provided by Open Arms. Basically everyone comes in and sets up their wares, and then everyone wanders around for a half-hour or so, checking out what the others have brought, chatting, and enjoying samples. Each item has a little info slip in front of it with its description, ingredients, and so on, and at the bottom are lines for folks who want to "bid" on that item to do so. So, for example, if you saw some wonderful olive tapenade (which I did, and which, alas, I did not get), you'd write down your name and what you're willing to trade for it (say, strawberry jam). While you're doing that, other people are checking out your stuff and writing their bids on your strawberry jam's info sheet. (Amounts are not as much a concern as you'd think -- David observed that a half-pint seemed to have become the standard unit of "currency" for a trade almost by default, but people weren't really crazy about sticking to that.) At the end of the bidding time, you go back and check out your offers and the swapping begins.
The amount of variety is pretty incredible -- there were jams and jellies, spice mixes, a wide variety of baked goods from the basics to the artisan, chocolates, chutneys, fridge pickles and relishes, canned goods, homemade dog treats, salted caramel sauce, fresh herbs, and other things I've probably forgotten. The presentation blew me away -- we'd skimped on that due to the short notice, but others did not, and it was as much a feast for the eyes as the appetite. We found plenty to trade for, and while we didn't get everything we wanted (such as the aforementioned tapenade and the amazing caramel sauce), we did get a lot of great stuff to diversify our pantry and munch on for the rest of the week.
So, not to give it all away, but this month we're anticipating bringing more of David's fresh-from-the-oven rolls, his killer homemade caramelized onion hummus, more jam, of course (for which I have more samples this time, since I've had more notice), and some of my flavored vinegars, infused with my homegrown herbs. If the hens get off their lazy fluffy butts and start laying soon, we'll have home-raised eggs for future swaps. I've made a number of things specifically for the swap -- which is where the "gone a little nuts" part comes in -- and tried some things I'd not have ordinarily tried (like the Spiced Ginger-Carrot Jelly I made the other night while I was pressure-canning pints of carrots), but I'm not normally all that adventurous in the kitchen, so maybe that's a good thing.
Next month's swap is coming up fast, so hopefully I will remember to get pictures this time and post a recap. ^_^
9.24.2011
9.20.2011
Gardening Mistakes Made This Year
I'm inspired by The Crunchy Chicken this morning to recap some of this year's garden bloopers, not in the spirit of self-recrimination so much as in the spirit of not making the same mistakes over and over again. So here are this year's "oopses:"
1. Planting the wrong things. Every spring I experience a bout of temporary insanity and plant cabbage. This is stupid for two reasons: first, I could get enough cabbage to make a kiddie pool full of sauer kraut for less than ten bucks at the farmer's market, come September. Second, my yard was apparently build on an ancient cabbage burial ground full of angry cruciferous spirits, so I've never had a cabbage actually make it to maturity and remain edible. Also, I should really give up on growing watermelons from seed in Minnesota. It's mid-September and the only way I'm using watermelons is if I can them whole in light syrup...in a quart jar. Some things were just never meant to be.
2. Getting lazy about weeding from early July through late August. When I need a saw to take down the lambsquarters, it's been too long. #1 and #2 may be related -- next year I think I'll just stir-fry the quackgrass roots and have a side salad of lambsquarter and wood sorrel and skip planting crops altogether. If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em. Well, except for the deadly nightshade.
3. Not getting seedlings in the ground -- this was largely due to our extremely late spring this year, but it did emphasize for me the importance of having cold frames, mini-hoophouses, or row covers to protect plants so I can get them in the ground on schedule. Now that Jackie Clay has moved to Minnesota and demonstrated all this year the benefits of growing things like peppers in a hoophouse in this climate, I'm sold on the idea. It's just a matter of getting the materials together and actually building them.
4. Forgetting that tomatoes aren't timid little shrubby or viney things; they're vegetative monstrosities capable of dismantling steel cages with their bare stems. I don't need tomato cages; I need a high security tomato lockdown facility with reinforced concrete supports, electrified perimeter fencing, and a moat. That's not to keep the garden pests out -- that's to keep the tomatoes in.
1. Planting the wrong things. Every spring I experience a bout of temporary insanity and plant cabbage. This is stupid for two reasons: first, I could get enough cabbage to make a kiddie pool full of sauer kraut for less than ten bucks at the farmer's market, come September. Second, my yard was apparently build on an ancient cabbage burial ground full of angry cruciferous spirits, so I've never had a cabbage actually make it to maturity and remain edible. Also, I should really give up on growing watermelons from seed in Minnesota. It's mid-September and the only way I'm using watermelons is if I can them whole in light syrup...in a quart jar. Some things were just never meant to be.
2. Getting lazy about weeding from early July through late August. When I need a saw to take down the lambsquarters, it's been too long. #1 and #2 may be related -- next year I think I'll just stir-fry the quackgrass roots and have a side salad of lambsquarter and wood sorrel and skip planting crops altogether. If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em. Well, except for the deadly nightshade.
3. Not getting seedlings in the ground -- this was largely due to our extremely late spring this year, but it did emphasize for me the importance of having cold frames, mini-hoophouses, or row covers to protect plants so I can get them in the ground on schedule. Now that Jackie Clay has moved to Minnesota and demonstrated all this year the benefits of growing things like peppers in a hoophouse in this climate, I'm sold on the idea. It's just a matter of getting the materials together and actually building them.
4. Forgetting that tomatoes aren't timid little shrubby or viney things; they're vegetative monstrosities capable of dismantling steel cages with their bare stems. I don't need tomato cages; I need a high security tomato lockdown facility with reinforced concrete supports, electrified perimeter fencing, and a moat. That's not to keep the garden pests out -- that's to keep the tomatoes in.
6.20.2011
Just another modest proposal from big agribusiness...
Thank heavens for the internet, showing me the error of my ways -- according to this fellow, "conventional" farming is better for the environment and even for animals being raised for food. He suggests that caged chickens are better off than free range chickens because they are less stressed due to their confinement.
Maybe he's on to something. If, indeed, intensive cage farming is better for the chickens because they consume fewer calories and thus resources and are not troubled by natural behaviors like moving around and establishing a social hierarchy, why not expand the concept? Why not solve this problem of expanding food needs by caging humans as well? Surely keeping humans in banks of tightly-fitting cages would be better for us, as it would eliminate such stressors as war, poverty, and competition for mates. We would take up much less space, which would be better for the environment.
And if we went one step further and fed us recycled bits of human as they feed chickens recycled bits of other chickens, we could drastically reduce our need to raise food animals -- and thus our impact upon the Earth. Such humans might not be able to lift their arms due to the tight quarters, but in the past raised arms have been used to hold weapons and intimidate others, so it's really better if we can eliminate these types of distressing behaviors altogether. And, really, isn't the lifespan of the average human right now a little over-the-top? If we can condense all this living into a smaller physical space, we might as well do what we do with chickens and condense it into a smaller temporal space as well. Meat chickens hit their peak at, what, six weeks? It would be hard to argue that people haven't hit their peak by thirty-five or so. If we could just select for the shortest-lived and fastest-growing humans, we could streamline things to fit many more generations into a century of time. And once you hit thirty-five, you still get to give back to the community by becoming people kibble. What could be more environmentally friendly than that?
Maybe he's on to something. If, indeed, intensive cage farming is better for the chickens because they consume fewer calories and thus resources and are not troubled by natural behaviors like moving around and establishing a social hierarchy, why not expand the concept? Why not solve this problem of expanding food needs by caging humans as well? Surely keeping humans in banks of tightly-fitting cages would be better for us, as it would eliminate such stressors as war, poverty, and competition for mates. We would take up much less space, which would be better for the environment.
And if we went one step further and fed us recycled bits of human as they feed chickens recycled bits of other chickens, we could drastically reduce our need to raise food animals -- and thus our impact upon the Earth. Such humans might not be able to lift their arms due to the tight quarters, but in the past raised arms have been used to hold weapons and intimidate others, so it's really better if we can eliminate these types of distressing behaviors altogether. And, really, isn't the lifespan of the average human right now a little over-the-top? If we can condense all this living into a smaller physical space, we might as well do what we do with chickens and condense it into a smaller temporal space as well. Meat chickens hit their peak at, what, six weeks? It would be hard to argue that people haven't hit their peak by thirty-five or so. If we could just select for the shortest-lived and fastest-growing humans, we could streamline things to fit many more generations into a century of time. And once you hit thirty-five, you still get to give back to the community by becoming people kibble. What could be more environmentally friendly than that?
6.13.2011
One of the things I inevitably spend way too much time doing is weeding. Our yard was a terribly neglected weed-patch when we bought the house, and between that and the weeds you get even in the best-tended and mulched garden beds, there's a lot of ground to cover. Hunched over in the hot sun or swatting away mosquitos as I dig out roots and rhizomes, I'm inclined to curse these out-of-place plants -- but a little research and a lot of closer looking has changed my outlook somewhat.
For all that the weeds drive me crazy, there are relatively few in my yard that are "useless," and several that are useful enough that it's astonishing that as a culture we've dismissed them so thoroughly. So this summer I want to talk about a few of these that you just might have sprouting around your yard, and even if you don't decide to eat them, you might regard them a little differently.
Some of the plants I'm going to mention require a lot more effort to use than it's probably worth most of the time. (After all, who wants to spend hours digging, cleaning, and pounding quackgrass roots to make bread when we have far more effective ways to do it? What we might do in a time of need may not be worth it in a time of relative plenty.) But this one is easy; you can pick it as-is, rinse it off, and pop it right in your mouth, and it's delicious. It grows all over the place and isn't difficult to find or identify, so it's free...how can you beat that? :) This is wood sorrel, a diminuitive clover-like plant common in the Midwest:
This plant is not too problematic to identify, because the only thing it closely resembles is clover, which (while far less palatable) is not toxic. There are a couple of ways to distinguish it; a patch of sorrel isn't going to have clover flowers, for one! (Its flowers are the dainty yellow ones in the picture; they can also occasionally be white depending on the sorrel variety, but they don't look anything like clover flowers.) Clover also tends to have duller green leaves with lighter-colored markings on them (as in the picture below), which wood sorrel lacks. If all else fails, you can tell by taste -- a clover leaf tastes...leafy...while the taste of sorrel is hard to miss.
Wood sorrel has a delicious, tangy, lemony flavor that will surprise you if you've never tried it before. It tends to grow in clumps, so you can gather enough for a meal in just a few minutes. I toss mine into a cup or paper bag and then rinse it out in a colander in the kitchen sink the same way I'd rinse lettuce leaves, then use in a salad either by itself or with other greens like spinach and basil. The flavor is strong and pleasant enough that it doesn't need much dressing up; I use just a tiny amount of oil and vinegar (citrus balsamic is absolutely fantastic with it; in the Twin Cities you can get this stuff cheap at Holy Land). Sesame seeds or almond slivers are good in this kind of salad, too.
For all that the weeds drive me crazy, there are relatively few in my yard that are "useless," and several that are useful enough that it's astonishing that as a culture we've dismissed them so thoroughly. So this summer I want to talk about a few of these that you just might have sprouting around your yard, and even if you don't decide to eat them, you might regard them a little differently.
Some of the plants I'm going to mention require a lot more effort to use than it's probably worth most of the time. (After all, who wants to spend hours digging, cleaning, and pounding quackgrass roots to make bread when we have far more effective ways to do it? What we might do in a time of need may not be worth it in a time of relative plenty.) But this one is easy; you can pick it as-is, rinse it off, and pop it right in your mouth, and it's delicious. It grows all over the place and isn't difficult to find or identify, so it's free...how can you beat that? :) This is wood sorrel, a diminuitive clover-like plant common in the Midwest:
This plant is not too problematic to identify, because the only thing it closely resembles is clover, which (while far less palatable) is not toxic. There are a couple of ways to distinguish it; a patch of sorrel isn't going to have clover flowers, for one! (Its flowers are the dainty yellow ones in the picture; they can also occasionally be white depending on the sorrel variety, but they don't look anything like clover flowers.) Clover also tends to have duller green leaves with lighter-colored markings on them (as in the picture below), which wood sorrel lacks. If all else fails, you can tell by taste -- a clover leaf tastes...leafy...while the taste of sorrel is hard to miss.
Wood sorrel has a delicious, tangy, lemony flavor that will surprise you if you've never tried it before. It tends to grow in clumps, so you can gather enough for a meal in just a few minutes. I toss mine into a cup or paper bag and then rinse it out in a colander in the kitchen sink the same way I'd rinse lettuce leaves, then use in a salad either by itself or with other greens like spinach and basil. The flavor is strong and pleasant enough that it doesn't need much dressing up; I use just a tiny amount of oil and vinegar (citrus balsamic is absolutely fantastic with it; in the Twin Cities you can get this stuff cheap at Holy Land). Sesame seeds or almond slivers are good in this kind of salad, too.
6.08.2011
The fruits of our labor
Well, if the last post was about the cold weather, this is the opposite extreme -- the temperature hit 103°F yesterday! We took the temperature in the shade after 6 p.m. and it was still over 100. This may not sound like much to those of you way down south, but we're in Minnesota, and a few weeks ago, we had snow! Fortunately, we didn't lose any chickens yesterday -- though several other people in the area did -- which was very lucky for us because ours still won't come out of the coop into the run, and as well-ventilated as it is, it was still searingly hot inside yesterday, poor things. I guess they're tough little birds. They'll have to be, in this climate!
I've gotten a lot more planted in the last few weeks, but it seems we're doomed to have no spring at all this year, so I don't think we'll be seeing much in the way of snap or snow peas. For some reason they didn't germinate for weeks after I planted them, and now it's been so hot I can't imagine they'll be producing much. So that's a let-down. But I think we're on track for strawberries in the near future, and we even got the first honeyberries we've ever had on our bushes a few days ago. I've heard lots of people say they aren't palatable for raw eating, but the little ones at least are delicious, in my opinion! They're very tart-sweet and unique; the closest comparison I can make is to tart red currants, but it's different from those, as well. We've planted a lot of fruit for many reasons -- one of which is that it's one of the types of food that tends to have the greatest number of food miles, since so many of the fruits we eat are tropical -- and it's gratifying to keep finding that the fruits that grow here, which you generally can't find at the grocery store, taste just as good or better. To me it's terribly sad that we've not only not cultivated the local fruits and enjoyed them, but in some cases (gooseberries, currants), have actually exterminated them or even banned them from being grown at all.
So far we have planted (not all this year!):
Canadian Chokecherry (x1, may have to get rid of due to black knot >_<)
Northstar Pie Cherry (x2)
Ben Sarek Black Currant (x4)
Red Lake Red Currant (x3)
Honeyberry (x3, 3 different varieties, but I can't recall which)
Gooseberry (x1, can't recall variety)
Mount Royal Plum (x1)
Junebearing Strawberries (4'x8' bed, plus where they've crept out into the yard)
Raspberry (x2, one red and one yellow)
Blackberry (x1, thornless)
Apple (x1, Honeycrisp)
Serviceberry (x1)
Rhubarb (x3)
Hardy Kiwi (x1 so far, need another)
Hazelnut (x2)
Various minimally successful attempts at melons
On my wish list:
Elderberry
Seaberry (I am seriously coveting the ones at Egg|Plant right now...)
Grape
Lingonberry
Not bad for a tenth of an acre lot that also has to hold our house, garage, chicken coop, and vegetable garden! I also hope to espalier some dwarf apples and more pie cherries along the sides of our house and garage once we replace our siding, and to start propagating some of the things I'm growing so I can help them get re-established in the area. I'd be curious to hear what other fruits people have tried to grow in colder climates, especially those that are less common.
Since the weather this year has been so unaccommodating, I leave you with some pictures from last year about this time, and the hope that things will be looking as nice in the garden this year, soon. ^_^
I've gotten a lot more planted in the last few weeks, but it seems we're doomed to have no spring at all this year, so I don't think we'll be seeing much in the way of snap or snow peas. For some reason they didn't germinate for weeks after I planted them, and now it's been so hot I can't imagine they'll be producing much. So that's a let-down. But I think we're on track for strawberries in the near future, and we even got the first honeyberries we've ever had on our bushes a few days ago. I've heard lots of people say they aren't palatable for raw eating, but the little ones at least are delicious, in my opinion! They're very tart-sweet and unique; the closest comparison I can make is to tart red currants, but it's different from those, as well. We've planted a lot of fruit for many reasons -- one of which is that it's one of the types of food that tends to have the greatest number of food miles, since so many of the fruits we eat are tropical -- and it's gratifying to keep finding that the fruits that grow here, which you generally can't find at the grocery store, taste just as good or better. To me it's terribly sad that we've not only not cultivated the local fruits and enjoyed them, but in some cases (gooseberries, currants), have actually exterminated them or even banned them from being grown at all.
So far we have planted (not all this year!):
Canadian Chokecherry (x1, may have to get rid of due to black knot >_<)
Northstar Pie Cherry (x2)
Ben Sarek Black Currant (x4)
Red Lake Red Currant (x3)
Honeyberry (x3, 3 different varieties, but I can't recall which)
Gooseberry (x1, can't recall variety)
Mount Royal Plum (x1)
Junebearing Strawberries (4'x8' bed, plus where they've crept out into the yard)
Raspberry (x2, one red and one yellow)
Blackberry (x1, thornless)
Apple (x1, Honeycrisp)
Serviceberry (x1)
Rhubarb (x3)
Hardy Kiwi (x1 so far, need another)
Hazelnut (x2)
Various minimally successful attempts at melons
On my wish list:
Elderberry
Seaberry (I am seriously coveting the ones at Egg|Plant right now...)
Grape
Lingonberry
Not bad for a tenth of an acre lot that also has to hold our house, garage, chicken coop, and vegetable garden! I also hope to espalier some dwarf apples and more pie cherries along the sides of our house and garage once we replace our siding, and to start propagating some of the things I'm growing so I can help them get re-established in the area. I'd be curious to hear what other fruits people have tried to grow in colder climates, especially those that are less common.
Since the weather this year has been so unaccommodating, I leave you with some pictures from last year about this time, and the hope that things will be looking as nice in the garden this year, soon. ^_^
5.01.2011
May Day feels more like February Day this morning...
I expected to wake up to a beautiful spring day today per all the weather forecasts from the past week, but alas it's cloudy again with a wind chill of 22 degrees. This is getting really tiresome.
That said, we did have a very busy and productive yesterday, including picking up our chickens! We now have three tiny little Silver-Laced Wyandotte hens peeping in a Rubbermaid in our extra room, out of reach of the (very curious, very frustrated) cats.
We're scheduled to finish up the permitting paperwork this week (finally...finally...FINALLY!) and then just have to deal with the coop inspection (for which we need to finish preparing -- we are just converting the back few feet of our shed) and we should be home free. This whole process has dragged out from our attempted early start (foiled by the city) in early-mid March and has involved a fairly insane number of requirements for a couple of backyard birds, so I am incredibly glad it's almost over.
Yesterday morning was also the first big Northside Food Resource Hub get-together since the initial meeting, including the first plant hand-out. The weather was absolutely miserable -- windy, icy-cold rain coming down hard, occasional lightning -- but the attendance when we got there just after it started was still pretty good. I imagine it picked up as the day went on.
We got a bag of seed packets and a few cold-weather plants -- the bulk of the pickup is later in May, in hopes that by then spring will have gotten around to arriving.
I should have more updates this week on various local initiatives, including Transition Town NE Minneapolis and the Canning Co-op I'm trying to start. Right now, though, the coffee downstairs is calling me, and then I need to get outside and work on that coop!
That said, we did have a very busy and productive yesterday, including picking up our chickens! We now have three tiny little Silver-Laced Wyandotte hens peeping in a Rubbermaid in our extra room, out of reach of the (very curious, very frustrated) cats.
We're scheduled to finish up the permitting paperwork this week (finally...finally...FINALLY!) and then just have to deal with the coop inspection (for which we need to finish preparing -- we are just converting the back few feet of our shed) and we should be home free. This whole process has dragged out from our attempted early start (foiled by the city) in early-mid March and has involved a fairly insane number of requirements for a couple of backyard birds, so I am incredibly glad it's almost over.
Yesterday morning was also the first big Northside Food Resource Hub get-together since the initial meeting, including the first plant hand-out. The weather was absolutely miserable -- windy, icy-cold rain coming down hard, occasional lightning -- but the attendance when we got there just after it started was still pretty good. I imagine it picked up as the day went on.
We got a bag of seed packets and a few cold-weather plants -- the bulk of the pickup is later in May, in hopes that by then spring will have gotten around to arriving.
I should have more updates this week on various local initiatives, including Transition Town NE Minneapolis and the Canning Co-op I'm trying to start. Right now, though, the coffee downstairs is calling me, and then I need to get outside and work on that coop!
4.17.2011
Arboretum and Stinging Nettle Tea
For some reason I woke up in a terrible mood today. I'm still not sure why, but the late-morning trip we took to the Como Arboretum helped a bit.
The weather was still distressingly un-spring-like when we got home, but the nettles at the side of the house were getting out of hand (I swear they grow an inch a day sometimes...), so when the husband announced he was going to go out and build some potato boxes, I decided today was the day to clip back the nettle patch and brew up some tea.
Nettles might seem like just an annoying weed, but they actually have a wide variety of uses. They're high in many vitamins (including vitamin C) and in protein, act as a diuretic, and young nettles especially are generally good for the kidneys, skin, and hair. You can cook them up like spinach, put them in soups, make nettle syrups, or just steam them and use them in salads. They can even be used to make a yellowish dye, or for their fibers (when they're a bit larger than this.) This batch I intend to put to dual purpose -- to freeze in ice cube trays to include in soups and stocks for extra nutrition and to add to teas and use topically for my hair.
Since I was picking them half to use and half to keep them from getting out of control like they did last year, I ended up gathering way too many. I added about half of them to my tea jar and poured two kettles of boiling water on top, then set them out in the sun to steep. I'll bring the jar in later and keep them steeping overnight (this method was suggested to me by a local herbalist last summer) and then strain and freeze or use.
The weather was still distressingly un-spring-like when we got home, but the nettles at the side of the house were getting out of hand (I swear they grow an inch a day sometimes...), so when the husband announced he was going to go out and build some potato boxes, I decided today was the day to clip back the nettle patch and brew up some tea.
Nettles might seem like just an annoying weed, but they actually have a wide variety of uses. They're high in many vitamins (including vitamin C) and in protein, act as a diuretic, and young nettles especially are generally good for the kidneys, skin, and hair. You can cook them up like spinach, put them in soups, make nettle syrups, or just steam them and use them in salads. They can even be used to make a yellowish dye, or for their fibers (when they're a bit larger than this.) This batch I intend to put to dual purpose -- to freeze in ice cube trays to include in soups and stocks for extra nutrition and to add to teas and use topically for my hair.
Since I was picking them half to use and half to keep them from getting out of control like they did last year, I ended up gathering way too many. I added about half of them to my tea jar and poured two kettles of boiling water on top, then set them out in the sun to steep. I'll bring the jar in later and keep them steeping overnight (this method was suggested to me by a local herbalist last summer) and then strain and freeze or use.
4.10.2011
Tired, but satisfied
I wasn't anticipating being able to get out into the garden at all this weekend -- we had another conference on Saturday, and then it was supposed to storm from Saturday afternoon through Monday morning, but Sunday ended up being unexpectedly nice out most of the day. I started early (or early for me on a weekend, anyway) and got out there by ten, and kept going straight through until almost five.
Now, I'm a pretty lazy person, and as such our whole yard has started off the gardening season in severe disarray. Somewhere around June last year I just lost my steam (the 90 degree temps, constant rain, swarms of mosquitoes, aggressively evil hive of yellow jackets living next to my back door, and sweltering humidity may have had something to do with that...last summer sucked) and the weeds launched an offensive that had to be seen to be believed. Between the 8' stinging nettles, lamb's quarters trees growing in my strawberry bed, and grassy things with a 4' diameter, there was no coming back. By the end of the summer I was so thoroughly disillusioned that I neglected to do the fall cleanup I should have done, and as a result we started off the year with overgrown, yucky garden beds. I was afraid it would be a solid month of drudgery before I'd be able to even plant anything, let alone have the yard look okay, but we've only put in about 11-12 hours of total work so far and we're in pretty good shape. Last week we overhauled all three raised beds from last year and did some general cleanup; this week we ripped out the sod for another bed, cleaned up three of the six sections of narrow garden on the other side of the sidewalk, raked a ton of dead grass out of the yard, and laid down an insane quantity of mulch. I didn't plant as much as I wanted to, but did at least get some peas and onions in the ground.
But, you know, as disheartening as it can be sometimes when you just can't seem to keep up, there's something rejuvenating about getting out there and putting in the physical labor. I'm going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but it's really uplifting to not be able to turn over a trowelful of dirt in my garden without exposing fat, happy earthworms; it's wonderful to feel and smell healthy, loose, rich soil and know that I'm maintaining something amazing that supports layer upon layer of life, into which I can stick a pathetically tiny seed and end up with huge carrots or onions or beans or marigolds or a hundred other things. It's rewarding to see my chives and valerian coming back and to know soon there will be big clumsy bumblebees and colorful butterflies flitting from flower to flower, that soon I'll be able to walk out after an afternoon storm and watch the evening sun refract through the droplets on the lamb's ear and catnip and bounce off my bottle border and cast little rainbows.
This year I'm growing things I haven't grown before, many of which are heirlooms or plants you don't find at the grocery store or most garden centers. And when I'm out there up to my elbows in soil, sending spiders and beetles scurrying, feeling the wind and the sun, I feel like I'm growing a connection to the past as much as I'm sowing vegetables or herbs. Those Amish tomatoes, that quinoa, those currants and gooseberries, the indigo and hyssop and feverfew -- people have been growing these things for far longer than I've been alive. And I feel like in a time and place where people just grow...grass...we've lost a vital appreciation for how amazing these other things we've found and cultivated and encouraged are. There are things in my garden that will prevent migraines. How many trips to the doctor do people make trying to figure out a way to do that? There are things in my garden that are substitutes for sugar. There's a plant that makes a natural insecticide, several that treat anxiety, and by this point more than ten that make delicious teas. Even the weeds that grow in my yard are useful -- I can eat the dandelions and lamb's quarters; the nettles are great for the kidneys and incredibly nutritious to boot; the catnip and yarrow are beautiful and medicinal. The "garbage" from weeding and cleanup can become new soil, or feed the chickens. I can even make wine out of some of it, like the dandelions or the pea-pods left over when I'm done eating our spring peas. Our old broken-down stump grows a profusion of mushrooms; even our compost pile is inevitably full of potatoes and tomatoes by the end of the summer. I don't work hard enough to earn the kind of bounty that's presented to me as if it were the most inevitable thing in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
Two weeks ago it was winter, the kind of winter I wouldn't want to spend much time outside in. And tonight it will storm like crazy again, with wind and pouring rain and maybe hail. And yet I'll go outside tomorrow morning and the trees will be budding and the birds will be singing as if nothing had happened at all, and I'll remember again with relief how small and unimportant I am to a world that can bounce back from extremes that would send me diving for cover, and think that as much as I neglect things and fail and screw up, as much as humanity in general screws up, odds are a million years from now all of this will still be out there thriving, living and growing and dying and living again, as if I'd never existed at all.
And I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
Now, I'm a pretty lazy person, and as such our whole yard has started off the gardening season in severe disarray. Somewhere around June last year I just lost my steam (the 90 degree temps, constant rain, swarms of mosquitoes, aggressively evil hive of yellow jackets living next to my back door, and sweltering humidity may have had something to do with that...last summer sucked) and the weeds launched an offensive that had to be seen to be believed. Between the 8' stinging nettles, lamb's quarters trees growing in my strawberry bed, and grassy things with a 4' diameter, there was no coming back. By the end of the summer I was so thoroughly disillusioned that I neglected to do the fall cleanup I should have done, and as a result we started off the year with overgrown, yucky garden beds. I was afraid it would be a solid month of drudgery before I'd be able to even plant anything, let alone have the yard look okay, but we've only put in about 11-12 hours of total work so far and we're in pretty good shape. Last week we overhauled all three raised beds from last year and did some general cleanup; this week we ripped out the sod for another bed, cleaned up three of the six sections of narrow garden on the other side of the sidewalk, raked a ton of dead grass out of the yard, and laid down an insane quantity of mulch. I didn't plant as much as I wanted to, but did at least get some peas and onions in the ground.
But, you know, as disheartening as it can be sometimes when you just can't seem to keep up, there's something rejuvenating about getting out there and putting in the physical labor. I'm going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but it's really uplifting to not be able to turn over a trowelful of dirt in my garden without exposing fat, happy earthworms; it's wonderful to feel and smell healthy, loose, rich soil and know that I'm maintaining something amazing that supports layer upon layer of life, into which I can stick a pathetically tiny seed and end up with huge carrots or onions or beans or marigolds or a hundred other things. It's rewarding to see my chives and valerian coming back and to know soon there will be big clumsy bumblebees and colorful butterflies flitting from flower to flower, that soon I'll be able to walk out after an afternoon storm and watch the evening sun refract through the droplets on the lamb's ear and catnip and bounce off my bottle border and cast little rainbows.
This year I'm growing things I haven't grown before, many of which are heirlooms or plants you don't find at the grocery store or most garden centers. And when I'm out there up to my elbows in soil, sending spiders and beetles scurrying, feeling the wind and the sun, I feel like I'm growing a connection to the past as much as I'm sowing vegetables or herbs. Those Amish tomatoes, that quinoa, those currants and gooseberries, the indigo and hyssop and feverfew -- people have been growing these things for far longer than I've been alive. And I feel like in a time and place where people just grow...grass...we've lost a vital appreciation for how amazing these other things we've found and cultivated and encouraged are. There are things in my garden that will prevent migraines. How many trips to the doctor do people make trying to figure out a way to do that? There are things in my garden that are substitutes for sugar. There's a plant that makes a natural insecticide, several that treat anxiety, and by this point more than ten that make delicious teas. Even the weeds that grow in my yard are useful -- I can eat the dandelions and lamb's quarters; the nettles are great for the kidneys and incredibly nutritious to boot; the catnip and yarrow are beautiful and medicinal. The "garbage" from weeding and cleanup can become new soil, or feed the chickens. I can even make wine out of some of it, like the dandelions or the pea-pods left over when I'm done eating our spring peas. Our old broken-down stump grows a profusion of mushrooms; even our compost pile is inevitably full of potatoes and tomatoes by the end of the summer. I don't work hard enough to earn the kind of bounty that's presented to me as if it were the most inevitable thing in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
Two weeks ago it was winter, the kind of winter I wouldn't want to spend much time outside in. And tonight it will storm like crazy again, with wind and pouring rain and maybe hail. And yet I'll go outside tomorrow morning and the trees will be budding and the birds will be singing as if nothing had happened at all, and I'll remember again with relief how small and unimportant I am to a world that can bounce back from extremes that would send me diving for cover, and think that as much as I neglect things and fail and screw up, as much as humanity in general screws up, odds are a million years from now all of this will still be out there thriving, living and growing and dying and living again, as if I'd never existed at all.
And I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
4.03.2011
First harvest of the year...
Somewhat improbably, we had our first harvest of the year today!
Last winter was unusually snowy, so the carrots we'd planned to dig in early winter were buried before we could get to them. Turns out they overwintered, as we dug up a good-sized pile today. About half weren't any good anymore and went to the worms or the compost pile, but this is what was left over. We also ended up with a bunch of leeks, though the rabbits got to them earlier this week, so David replanted the roots along with some dubious carrots, and we'll see what we get! This is definitely making me reconsider the viability of overwintering crops in Minnesota, or at the very least using row-covers and mulch and planning to harvest through December at least, particularly as we slacked off last fall and didn't mulch, cover, or otherwise protect anything at all.
It's very grey out, in that dingy early-spring kind of way -- very little color has come back to the landscape, and everything's still half-buried under last year's dried grass, rotted vegetable material, or faded mulch. But we were determined to get into the yard and get some work done today, and it turns out if you look close enough, spring is starting to show itself. The chives are coming up...
The currants are budding...
And one of the buckets in which I had snapdragons planted last year is full of life.
In fact, several of the planters have tiny little interesting things starting to come up.
All this was so inspiring to see that we spent about four hours working today and managed to get all three of our current 4' x 8' raised beds ready for planting. We didn't get any onion sets or peas in the ground today, but we have onions that self-seeded last year and are coming up by themselves, and we can start planting anytime this week.
This year we'll be tearing out at least 100 more square feet of grass in the backyard for a few more 4' x 8' beds, continuing to plant the strip of garden along the sidewalk that's probably about 2.5' x 60', planting something in the 10' x 10' patch behind the shed, and tearing out grass in the front yard so I can expand my herb garden! I am going to be so sore tomorrow from the work we did today, but it doesn't matter -- I'm just glad to be able to get started!
Last winter was unusually snowy, so the carrots we'd planned to dig in early winter were buried before we could get to them. Turns out they overwintered, as we dug up a good-sized pile today. About half weren't any good anymore and went to the worms or the compost pile, but this is what was left over. We also ended up with a bunch of leeks, though the rabbits got to them earlier this week, so David replanted the roots along with some dubious carrots, and we'll see what we get! This is definitely making me reconsider the viability of overwintering crops in Minnesota, or at the very least using row-covers and mulch and planning to harvest through December at least, particularly as we slacked off last fall and didn't mulch, cover, or otherwise protect anything at all.
It's very grey out, in that dingy early-spring kind of way -- very little color has come back to the landscape, and everything's still half-buried under last year's dried grass, rotted vegetable material, or faded mulch. But we were determined to get into the yard and get some work done today, and it turns out if you look close enough, spring is starting to show itself. The chives are coming up...
The currants are budding...
And one of the buckets in which I had snapdragons planted last year is full of life.
In fact, several of the planters have tiny little interesting things starting to come up.
All this was so inspiring to see that we spent about four hours working today and managed to get all three of our current 4' x 8' raised beds ready for planting. We didn't get any onion sets or peas in the ground today, but we have onions that self-seeded last year and are coming up by themselves, and we can start planting anytime this week.
This year we'll be tearing out at least 100 more square feet of grass in the backyard for a few more 4' x 8' beds, continuing to plant the strip of garden along the sidewalk that's probably about 2.5' x 60', planting something in the 10' x 10' patch behind the shed, and tearing out grass in the front yard so I can expand my herb garden! I am going to be so sore tomorrow from the work we did today, but it doesn't matter -- I'm just glad to be able to get started!
4.01.2011
Thinking about goals.
I've written up my goal list for this year three or four times and not been happy with it -- maybe my first goal ought to be to decide on goals!
In the past two years, we've begun gardening, planted lots of perennial fruit plants (more on the fruit later), and ripped out much of our grass to create growing space and a permeable patio area. We've learned to can just about everything cannable (including milk and meat), dry food for later use, make basic cheese and yogurt, make candy, slaughter chickens, and bake all our own bread. We've set up a full-room pantry and begun stocking it with staples, built a vermicompost bin, and gotten two compost piles going. So I feel like we're making some good progress, but we're getting to the point where adding to our skill-set is more of a challenge.
Things we're working on now that could use some improvement:
-Cooking vegetables -- particularly greens. Both of us approach this as if they're likely to explode if we do it wrong, which is kind of silly. After all, the worst that could happen is they could turn into unbearably disgusting green slime, right?
-Seed-starting
-Trapping with snares
-Crocheting (Which I finally seem to have gotten the hang of, as of last night! Woohoo!)
-Sewing (I can do repairs and sew a straight seam fairly well, but patterns and cutting pieces out always seems to end in disaster)
-Cheese-making (As in branching out beyond ricotta and feta)
-Canning (As in planning for canning, which even though it rhymes is actually the hard part in this era of grocery-store food on demand. This is a great post on this topic.)
Things we're not working on yet that I'd really like to learn:
-Using our greywater in the garden
-Shooting (I'm a decent shot in archery, but I'd like to learn to hunt in general, if I can ever afford to do so.)
-Soap-making (Seems easy, but I can't find lye anywhere local!)
-Knitting (Because I should be making all of our socks by now. For shame, Angela!)
-Keeping chickens for eggs and meat (I've had them before, but there's a lot of planning and city approval and such to deal with to have them here.)
-Keeping rabbits for meat (The fact that we refer to the neighborhood bunnies as "Dinner" and "Lunchable" depending on their size suggests we won't have a problem with this.)
Projects that are started and not finished because I need to get off my rear and stop being lazy:
-Rain barrels
-Pulling out some of the shrubs our predecessors unfortunately left us with, including the evergreen that seems to be entirely composed of bird poop and ugly.
-Tearing out more grass so we can plant more useful/attractive/interesting things.
-Putting up the clothesline (though I have switched from using the dryer to hanging things up inside, most of the time).
Of these, I think this year we can manage to finish the unfinished projects and figure out at least a couple on the "like to learn" list. Seed-starting and crocheting were both on that list until very recently, so we are making some progress. The trick with a lot of this is finding cheap or free ways to learn the skills, since we have very little funding to put toward them. I'd love to get more skill shares going in the area to barter some of that, but I'm not really sure where to start. (I always end up feeling like we don't have anything to barter in return for learning the things we don't know, since what we do know is so basic.) I tried to get in touch with a local Transition Towns group, but they never responded, so I think they may be defunct. I will have to do some more digging to see what I can find.
In the past two years, we've begun gardening, planted lots of perennial fruit plants (more on the fruit later), and ripped out much of our grass to create growing space and a permeable patio area. We've learned to can just about everything cannable (including milk and meat), dry food for later use, make basic cheese and yogurt, make candy, slaughter chickens, and bake all our own bread. We've set up a full-room pantry and begun stocking it with staples, built a vermicompost bin, and gotten two compost piles going. So I feel like we're making some good progress, but we're getting to the point where adding to our skill-set is more of a challenge.
Things we're working on now that could use some improvement:
-Cooking vegetables -- particularly greens. Both of us approach this as if they're likely to explode if we do it wrong, which is kind of silly. After all, the worst that could happen is they could turn into unbearably disgusting green slime, right?
-Seed-starting
-Trapping with snares
-Crocheting (Which I finally seem to have gotten the hang of, as of last night! Woohoo!)
-Sewing (I can do repairs and sew a straight seam fairly well, but patterns and cutting pieces out always seems to end in disaster)
-Cheese-making (As in branching out beyond ricotta and feta)
-Canning (As in planning for canning, which even though it rhymes is actually the hard part in this era of grocery-store food on demand. This is a great post on this topic.)
Things we're not working on yet that I'd really like to learn:
-Using our greywater in the garden
-Shooting (I'm a decent shot in archery, but I'd like to learn to hunt in general, if I can ever afford to do so.)
-Soap-making (Seems easy, but I can't find lye anywhere local!)
-Knitting (Because I should be making all of our socks by now. For shame, Angela!)
-Keeping chickens for eggs and meat (I've had them before, but there's a lot of planning and city approval and such to deal with to have them here.)
-Keeping rabbits for meat (The fact that we refer to the neighborhood bunnies as "Dinner" and "Lunchable" depending on their size suggests we won't have a problem with this.)
Projects that are started and not finished because I need to get off my rear and stop being lazy:
-Rain barrels
-Pulling out some of the shrubs our predecessors unfortunately left us with, including the evergreen that seems to be entirely composed of bird poop and ugly.
-Tearing out more grass so we can plant more useful/attractive/interesting things.
-Putting up the clothesline (though I have switched from using the dryer to hanging things up inside, most of the time).
Of these, I think this year we can manage to finish the unfinished projects and figure out at least a couple on the "like to learn" list. Seed-starting and crocheting were both on that list until very recently, so we are making some progress. The trick with a lot of this is finding cheap or free ways to learn the skills, since we have very little funding to put toward them. I'd love to get more skill shares going in the area to barter some of that, but I'm not really sure where to start. (I always end up feeling like we don't have anything to barter in return for learning the things we don't know, since what we do know is so basic.) I tried to get in touch with a local Transition Towns group, but they never responded, so I think they may be defunct. I will have to do some more digging to see what I can find.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)